This battle is fucking underrated, shit was crazy.>3 year siege and overlapping running naval battle ultimately involving hundreds of thousands of soldiers from all across Western Europe (Dutch, Spaniards, Italians, Belgians, English, Irish, Germans, French)>100,000+ casualties, mostly deaths>entire city reduced to rubble by cannon fire, wrecked buildings are then repurposed into improvised pallisades>extensive fortifications enacted on both sides as musket and cannon fire is exchanged, situation turns into a combination of pike and shot and fucking WWI trench warfare>fire exchanges as well as trench assaults and sallies become a weekly occurrence, often involving brutal hand to hand fighting with swords, daggers, and polearms>attempts at mining and counter-mining to blow up each other's positions from underneath>city was coastal and flanked by dunes, flooded polders, and canals, fortified with ramparts, counterscarps, and water-filled ditches connected to the sea; siege degenerates into brutal bloody assaults on mini-fort after mini-fort, via a combination of musket fire, hand-to-hand combat, and grenades>ultimately ends because some nepo baby with no military experience who bought his commission actually turns out to be a military genius>attackers win but both sides take such horrible losses that a truce is agreed on not long after
>>18295669The Eighty years wars probably has more sieges than battles, not counting those on sea.
>>18295733The Northern Netherlands were heavily urbanized and covered in swamps and marshes, not that many places to have classic setpiece battles so it ended up being a bunch of sieges which in practice were each dozens of tiny battles dragged out over the course of months/years.
>>18295669The 80 Years War in general was crazy. My favorite episode was the dutch "woodclad" Finis Belli deployed during the Siege of Antwerp in 1684/85 in order to breach the spanish blockade. >Antwerp gets encircled by the Spanish who in good order built multiple forts so that they could control the river Scheldt and thus the supply to the city>but they fail to take over one key dutch fort and the blockade is thus incomplete>np, we just built some more forts and a fortified bridge (heavy tree trunks, large beams, iron chains, walkways covered with shot-proof parapets) to cut off the city - said the spanish>the dutch just flood the surrounding lands (works everytime)>the spanish forts become islands>fighting ensues over those "islands" with all sorts of low draft barges and boats>the fortified bridge still needs to be destroyed so that heavier cargo ships can reach Antwerp>the dutch send two fireships (with blast chambers lined with masonry, stones, and other shit for shrapnel) against the bridge>fireship A runs aground and detonates harmlessly; fireship B reaches the bridge and a tremondous expolsion badly damages it>the dutch somehow fail to coordinate an attack and the spanish repair the damaged bridge>the dutch then focus on taking and demolishing a counter-dike in order to raise the water level so that the bridge could simply be bypassed>the dutch manage to take over a portion of the counter-dike and blow holes into it; enough that some resupply ships could pass>spanish counterattack ensues and the fighting continues for so long that the low tides comes in and grounds some of the dutch ships>the dutch are getting desperate and built a heavy woodclad barge/floating battery so that the fortified bridge could be attacked again>enter the Finis Belli: armored with heavy oaken planks, cork and oakum wrapped barrels; armed with at least 20 heavy cannons; complement of 500 soldiers>it runs aground>the dutch finaly surrender
>The trojan peat-ship of Breda>The literal draining of the swamp at Den Bosch This is A-team levels of bullshittery and you can't convince me otherwise.
